Photo by NASA

The U.S.-UK technology deal announced in September 2025 promises to accelerate Britain’s AI sector, but critics warn it will happen at the expense of national tech sovereignty. It reflects the steady trend of U.S. government and private interests extending a technologically driven form of hegemony, employing communications, data, and AI systems to deepen dependence on American networks and weaponize against rivals.

China has built a parallel structure of influence through its own technology exports, manufacturing base, and integrated supply chains, challenging the American model without the costly global military footprint. And unlike earlier empires, Washington’s and Beijing’s systems increasingly overlap: Spain, long considered a reliable partner for American tech firms and data security, has faced U.S. pressure after contracting with Chinese company Huawei in July to store judicial wiretap data.

Yet both tech-driven networks face a growing diffusion of capability. Advances in manufacturing, resource mapping, and digital development are making it easier for smaller states to build industries that have until now been dominated by major powers—“Small countries like Taiwan and the Netherlands have curated specialized offerings in niche parts of the global AI supply chain,” stated an article in the digital law and policy journal Just Security. A more balanced and competitive order could emerge, though the U.S. and China still retain major leverage.

The U.S. has maintained a strong foreign presence for more than a century. When Elihu Root became Secretary of War in 1899, he had already spent decades cultivating the nation’s elites as a lawyer and once in office, he modernized the army for sustained overseas operations. Subsequent American expansion in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines was framed as paternal administration—to spread the “civilizing mission” to those less fortunate in need of a long period of paternal tuition—rather than colonial conquest. Yet military power remained central to advancing government and private American interests.

After World War II, the collapse of European empires left the U.S. and the Soviet Union with competing spheres of influence. Unlike Moscow’s more militarized approach, “Washington’s forms of control were more in accordance with the will of the local populations,” creating what scholars called an “empire by invitation,” according to Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad. Military and subversive power were often used to promote U.S. interests, but many states partnered voluntarily to receive financial and technical assistance.

With the Soviet collapse in 1991, the U.S. entered a new phase of expansion. Technologies like GPS, which reached full global coverage in 1993, expanded American power as a “silent utility” providing an increasingly essential service. The rapid spread of the internet under U.S. oversight further extended American standards and control across global communications, while the rise of tech giants like Microsoft, Intel, and Google embedded U.S. software and hardware at the center of globalized technology systems.

Even as global military demobilization followed the Cold War, Washington demonstrated its continued combat and technological dominance through limited conflicts in the Persian Gulf and precision strikes in the Balkans. Dominating global arms exports, it deepened leverage by integrating more countries into U.S. weapons systems and defense supply chains.

Yet within years, the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq exposed the limits of invasions and occupation, which no longer guaranteed control over resources or populations. As of March 2025, America had 1.3 million personnel stationed abroad, reflecting an outdated emphasis on physical presence. With nearly 90 percent of corporate assets in advanced economies now intangible, such as software, patents, and intellectual property, the same logic applies to power projection. Digital networks and remote capabilities have replaced much of what permanent garrisons once represented.

Trump’s October 2025 suggestion to reclaim Afghanistan’s Bagram airbase to counter China, if genuine, reflects the durability of that older strategic thinking. Analysts noted that most of the surveillance and strike capabilities he referenced are already met through long-endurance drones, sensor arrays, and satellites. The vulnerability of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea to drones and missile strikes during the war with Ukraine further shows the new limits of fixed bases in contested regions.

Under the Obama administration, the U.S. had already adjusted military strategy toward targeted strikes, digital surveillance, cyber operations, and space-based surveillance, collectively known as “triple canopy.” These measures expanded under the Trump and Biden administrations, with the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) unveiling major advances in biometric drones that are capable of more effectively identifying and targeting individuals.

Space has regained its centrality to reducing the sprawling American military burden. In September 2025, the Space Development Agency launched the first phase of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a mesh of low-orbit satellites for global surveillance and communication.

Other programs like the Golden Dome, building on Reagan’s “Star Wars” and Obama’s triple canopy concepts, seek to fuse space, land, and cyber networks into an automated U.S. defense grid integrated with the private sector. AI and autonomous ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems have steadily outsourced more decision-making to code.

Much of this technological architecture extends beyond the military. Dual-use systems like Starlink and integrated AI tools have become indispensable to governments and populations alike. Many countries host their public data on American cloud servers, while their citizens communicate through WhatsApp and pay for services through Google Pay—daily dependencies maintained without a single U.S. soldier in sight.

China’s Challenge

China is also building counterspace weapons and satellite systems to resist U.S. orbital dominance, and its military capabilities are similarly matched by strategic and commercial components. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, and its digital extension, the Digital Silk Road, have grown to rival U.S. initiatives. For the first time, Washington faces a competitor able to offer countries comparable material benefits on a scale that not even the Soviet Union’s foreign infrastructure projects ever achieved.

Despite Western alarm over the security risks associated with Chinese technology, many developing and emerging countries continue to adoptChinese digital infrastructure. High-quality equipment, low costs, and state-backed financing have made Chinese systems indispensable even for governments aware of the surveillance and dependency potential, which is also true of U.S. technology.

China’s digital infrastructure is deliberately designed for interoperability with subsequent Chinese technologies, ensuring that upgrades and maintenance depend on continued Chinese support.

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